1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to storage devices that perform write operations on serial data in association with memories.
This application claims priority on Japanese Patent Application No. 2003-125361, the content of which is incorporated herein by reference.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, facsimile machines (or telecopying machines) are designed to scan image data so as to produce serial data consisting of binary data representing white and black pixels, wherein when serial data are transmitted, they are subjected to compression using run-length coding (or run-length encoding). Japanese Patent Application Publication No. Hei 11-328948 discloses an example of a storage device that expands serial data into parallel data to be stored in memory arrays. According to this technology, serial data are sequentially input and are written into memory arrays, wherein write operation on the lastly input data into the memory array is increased in speed compared with write operation on the previous data in the memory array; thus, it is possible to reduce the overall data setup time so as to realize the high-speed write operation with respect to the memory arrays.
However, the aforementioned storage device is designed such that serial data are individually latched and are then written into the respective memory arrays, wherein the same data consecutively repeated in the serial data should be individually latched so that the same write operation should be repeated. For this reason, when serial data having a relatively large run length are stored in the storage device, it is very difficult to effectively increase the overall speed of writing them into the storage device.